Tape storage: The smart person's guide

[Borg 386]

Storing data on magnetic tapes is the IT industry equivalent of Old Faithful. But unlike the geyser, tape storage is learning new tricks to keep it very relevant for integrating with modern systems. The latest generation of tape media has intelligence and capacities that have never been seen.

Advocates of cloud and commodity disk backup may disagree, but tape has been and may well continue to be the cheapest, most reliable, and simplest long-term (also known as "cold") data storage method. Drives for older tape formats are relatively easy to obtain, and drives for newer formats tend to also read/write media from a generation or two in the past. Unlike most other modern mass storage methods, you can easily move tapes to secure off-site locations and literally store them on a shelf.

Tape storage: The smart person's guide - TechRepublic

 

[strollin]

Thanks for the link to the article.

I first used floppies for backups but when hdd sizes got bigger, floppies became a chore. I then got a tape drive and backed up to tape. It was better than floppies but agonizingly slow. I dropped tape when hdd prices came down low enough where it was practical to use an external hdd for backup.

I now have multi-terabytes of stuff I want to keep backed up (mostly movies on my NAS). I have been using an external hdd but maybe I need to look into current generation tape storage.

 

[margrave]

Tape is the cheapest? Probably.

Most reliable? Definitely NOT! Okay, maybe for one-time use archive tapes. But not for an on-site/off-site cyclical model. In such cases tapes are the most painful, unreliable, confounding part of IT infrastructure support.

strollin: Were you speaking of personal/consumer use of tape backups? I think this whole tape-backup thing pertains to commercial/business use, not consumer use.

 

[whs]

Right, I don't think tape is a good option for us normal consumers. We usually do not have enough data to store to make the price difference to disks significant.

 

[strollin]

... strollin: Were you speaking of personal/consumer use of tape backups? I think this whole tape-backup thing pertains to commercial/business use, not consumer use.

I was talking about for my personal use. Most likely will stick with external hdd but always willing to take a look at alternatives. For multiple backups, tape is definitely less expensive since you only need 1 drive but can purchase multiple tape cartridges. Not sure if there are any consumer grade tape backup units that are worth looking at.

 

[margrave]

For personal use? Okay ...

I pulled an 80 GB drive from an old laptop and put it into an external USB drive box for $10.
Later I replaced that external box with a $25 box ... because this newer one supports USB 3.0 for better speed.
Now I'm planning to scrap another laptop, and put its 330 GB drive into that external box.
Lots of storage for little money.

At work IT does not do backups. So I do my own onto a 64 GB thumb drive ... for $20.
Lots of storage for little money.

These solutions are cheaper than tape, faster than tape, and MUCH more reliable than tape.
The only tape I use anymore is Scotch.

 

[strollin]

That's all well and good but I need to backup terabytes of data, thumb drives and spare hdds don't cut it for that. I currently use a pair of dedicated 5 TB hdds to do my backups.

 

[Layback Bear]

It seem to me that different people have different needs for backup and therefore use different methods.
strollin has a need for large volume of space for backups. If he used my method he would have a bunch of 250GB SSD's with backups.

If I used strollin method I would have a bunch of wasted space on drives.

Different strokes for different folks.